The two figures who had dedicated their lives to serving
their country were attending a council meeting at the Islamic Republic Party's
building, discussing the pressing issues facing the country. Little did they
know that a security personnel, entrusted with protecting them, would betray
that trust and proceed to assassinate them.
The security man, named Massoud Kashmiri, entered the room
with a briefcase that contained a bomb. In an instant, lives were lost, and the
two senior officials were killed. The explosion also took the lives of two
servicemen and a woman who happened to be passing by the building.
Mujahedin-e-Khalq, a terrorist organization, proudly claimed responsibility for
the cowardly attack. They admitted to giving Kashmiri the mission to
assassinate the two top officials.
The news of the loss quickly spread across the country. The
Tehran Times was one of the outlets that covered the tragedy and the countless
reactions to it. According to a report published by the Tehran Times on
September 01, hundreds of thousands of people attended the funeral ceremony of
Bahonar and Rajai to bid farewell to the two beloved officials.
Iran’s parliament released a statement after the attack
urging people to not lose hope and to continue their mission toward full
freedom. “Once again people like Banisadr, Bakhtiar, the MKO, and other
hypocrites, have used their political and military fronts to undermine the
Islamic Revolution. They have used all their powers to shatter the power and
firmness of the Islamic republic, but to no avail, for the ship of the revolution
is sailing at full speed ahead,” read the statement.
Other officials congratulated the two men’s martyrdom,
saying “No power can stain divine light” and that the revolution will continue
despite “plots of the enemies”.
“The martyrdom of these two pure sons of Islam took place to
show once again the feebleness and the wickedness of terrorism,” said the then
Defense Minister Mousa Namjoo.
More than four decades after Bahonar and Rajai’s
assassination, the two figures are still regarded as role models for their
sincerity, perseverance, enthusiasm, and hard work. That’s while the terror
organization responsible for their killing has not been able to take a breather
from nonstop misery ever since.
The MKO, which was once on Washington’s list of terrorist organizations,
began an unsuccessful quest to find safety soon after the Iran-Iraq war
ended.
The terrorists were first relocated from their primary camp,
Ashraf, in Iraq’s Diyala Province to Camp Hurriyet, a former US military base
in Baghdad, where they lived under constant fear of getting targeted by Iranian
forces. They were later sent to another camp in Albania until 2023 when their
residence was raided by Albanian police. Some reports suggest the group should
be looking for a new shelter as their kingpin, Maryam Rajavi, was banned from
entering the Eastern European country and the group was put under investigation
by Albania’s judiciary.
It seems that the terrorists who thought they would be able
to change the course of Iran’s history by assassinating top figures and killing
innocent civilians have finally reached their end.
